Love and courage

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This article was published 10/01/2015 (3916 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Two years ago, everything in Cheryl Mauthe’s family of three seemed pretty normal. Son Colin was about to start Grade 1 and his younger sister Emily was set to join him at Brandon’s École Harrison in kindergarten.

Except Colin, then six, had been mentioning he had a sore throat.

“But like any other kid he was still eating, still drinking, still fighting with his sister,” Cheryl recalls. “On the third day of his complaining, it was ‘OK, enough, let’s take you to a walk-in.’”

At the end of the doctor’s visit, Cheryl mentioned Colin didn’t eat a lot of meat and the doctor agreed he looked a little pale, so he ordered some lab work to check for iron deficiency.

An hour later, Cheryl received a call from the doctor. She remembers the conversation in snippets — ‘lab work’, ‘awful’, ‘all over the map’, ‘CancerCare’ and ‘meet me at the emergency room.’

The diagnosis — acute lymphoblastic leukemia. That means his bone marrow makes too many lymphoblasts, and not enough other cells.

“I didn’t even understand fully what that was at that point. I just knew that it wasn’t good and we didn’t want it and now Colin had it," said Cheryl.

Although Cheryl and her childrens’ father are divorced, news of Colin’s diagnosis pulled the family together from both sides. And while his parents, grandparents and other family and friends were devastated by the news, Colin remained his typical happy self.

Fast forward five months to February 2014. Cheryl was all set to go back to work at the Brandon Regional Health Centre when a reminder popped up on her phone. She was due for a follow-up ultrasound.

She’d booked the first one in the summer of 2013 after feeling a lump. It showed nothing. Her doctor assured her she was too young to have breast cancer. And the 33-year-old single mother raising two children in a small bungalow in Brandon shrugged off her worries as just being cancer paranoid, due to Colin’s illness.

However, during her second ultrasound, doctors found a cyst and ordered a biopsy.

Cheryl was at CancerCare in Winnipeg with her son when a nurse called to discuss the results.

Instead of giving the results over the phone, the nurse wanted to book an appointment for Cheryl to speak to her doctor. That’s when Cheryl knew it was not good.

“When I walked into my doctor’s office to get the official results, he knew I had been at CancerCare and he asked me how Colin was doing. And I said, ‘Colin’s fine — tell me it’s not cancer.’ He had tears in his eyes and he just nodded.

Cheryl burst into tears.  The doctor held me and said: ‘We’re going to figure this out.’”

‘Cancer buddies’

About a week after Cheryl had been diagnosed with breast cancer, she broke the news to Colin and Emily at a family meeting.

Colin hugged his mom: “We’re cancer buddies? You have cancer, too?”

And then, she recalls, “Emily starts to get upset and says, ‘It’s no fair — everybody has cancer except me!’ and storms to her bedroom.

“I have one child that’s excited because I have cancer with him and I have another child that’s upset because she doesn’t have cancer.”

-Cheryl Mauthe

“And I’m sitting there thinking, I can’t believe this is my family. I have one child that’s excited because I have cancer with him and I have another child that’s upset because she doesn’t have cancer.”

Once again, news that cancer had attacked Cheryl’s family spread fast. A co-worker started a fund for Cheryl’s family at the Westoba Credit Union, and staff and parents of children at École Harrison held fundraisers, planned meals and offered any other support they could give. Friends rallied, even throwing her a “bye-bye boobie” party.

In March 2014, Cheryl underwent a lumpectomy at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre. Less than two months later she would undergo a 10-hour bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction after the lumpectomy revealed a diagnosis of triple negative multifocal breast cancer. Soon after, while still healing from the surgery, Cheryl began chemotherapy at CancerCare’s Western Manitoba Cancer Centre in Brandon and for four months mom and son went through chemo at the same time.

During Cheryl’s final chemo treatment in early October, she took stock of the year.

“February we get the news and I’m crying in the doctor’s office and crying in my own car in the parking lot, wondering ‘how the heck am I going to do this?’ To now, and I look back and it’s like… all of it feels like a bad dream in a way, and it’s just over. And what does that even mean, that’s the other part of it — what’s the next part of it? What is life without CancerCare? I dunno. I’m happy though. I’ve got this.”

In early November, Cheryl was given the ‘all clear’ from her oncologist. After almost a year of hell she had beaten her own cancer. And hopefully Colin can say the same thing later this year.

“I am a much stronger person than I ever gave myself credit for,” she says. “I didn’t know, after divorce, how to be on my own. And I look back at everything life has thrown at us and realize that the strength of a family is an amazing thing and that will pull you through. The three of us, we love each other tremendously and with love there’s nothing we can’t get through at this point.”

 

Colin looks up as his chemotherapy drugs are administered at the CancerCare Manitoba facility inside Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg in April. Colin’s chemo treatment began in September 2012 and is scheduled to continue until October 30, 2015.

The immediate few weeks after Colin’s diagnosis were a blur. “He went from being a normal kid to being a very sick kid very fast. Life forever changed that day," Cheryl remembers.

 

Cheryl and Colin, mother and son bonded by cancer, wrestle on the kitchen floor one evening in April.

Chemotherapy, lumbar punctures, blood counts, constant trips to CancerCare Manitoba in Winnipeg, missed school for both Colin and Emily. All are pencilled in on the calender on Cheryl’s fridge — right next to sports camps, in-service days, birthdays and the rest of their day-to-day schedule.

 

Colin has a smiley face drawn on his bandaid after having blood drawn in the emergency room at the Brandon Regional Health Centre. He had spiked a fever over 38C that morning, which for someone in his condition means a trip to the ER to have his blood cell count checked. The fever ended up being a symptom of a common viral infection.

“(Colin has) never had the idea in his head that he is sick. We’ve always said, ‘Your blood is sick, not you.’ And I think that’s helped him a long ways with his attitude with it. Our family motto is: ‘Never give up.’ We just keep saying that.”

 

Cheryl replays her conversation with Dr. Ethel MacIntosh in her head after their first meeting at the Breast Health Centre in Winnipeg.

“When I walked into my doctor’s office to get the official results, he knew I had been at CancerCare and he asked me how Colin was doing. And I said, ‘Colin’s fine — tell me it’s not cancer.’ He had tears in his eyes and he just nodded.

“And I just totally lost it. I’m sure people in the waiting room heard me crying. How in the world am I going to do this, too? How am I going to get over my cancer and be strong enough to help Colin get over his? I totally lost it. The doctor held me and said, ‘We’re going to figure this out.’”

 

Cheryl is very conscious about giving her family as normal a life as possible despite the hands they’ve been dealt. This means taking time to play with her kids despite how lousy she feels.

Within a week, Cheryl called the family meeting where Colin discovered he had a cancer buddy and where Emily realized she was the odd one out because she was healthy.

“I said, ‘You guys know what cancer is right?’ And they said, ‘yessssss, Mom’ because cancer is such a normal word in this house and I’ve tried very hard to not make it scary and tragic. And I asked, ‘You know what boobies are, right?’ and they both kinda giggled and said ‘yes’. Well, mommy got breast cancer.”

 

Colin, right, lies on the living room couch watching television; Cheryl, left, lies on the same couch in pain.

Within days of her diagnosis, Cheryl met with surgeons and oncologists. Based on her age, medical history and biopsy results, Dr. Ethel MacIntosh — a Winnipeg surgeon who specializes in breast cancer surgery — recommended a lumpectomy, hoping the tumours were localized and could be removed without the need for a more invasive mastectomy.  The surgery took place March 12.

In early April, Dr. MacIntosh called Cheryl with the pathology results from her lumpectomy. It wasn’t the news she had been hoping for.

The official diagnosis was triple negative multifocal breast cancer. The results showed a series of tumours and the suggested treatment was a bilateral mastectomy as soon as possible. Breast tissue would be removed from both of Cheryl’s breasts.  Surgery was scheduled for May 5.

 

Cheryl sobs in the arms of her friend Annie Jago-Fordyce in May, a day before her double mastectomy.

The day before the big surgery, Cheryl packed for her trip to Winnipeg — an exercise she’d practiced several times, taking things out and putting more things in, stressing over what to bring.

When the kids disappeared downstairs to have a Nerf gun battle, Cheryl finally cracked. “I don’t want to do this,” she sobbed into a close friend’s comforting shoulder.

But a few minutes later, she dried her tears and went downstairs to join in the Nerf battle — one last play with her kids before surgery. Screams of laughter echoed through the house.

Then she hugged her kids, sent them off with their dad and headed to Winnipeg with her mom.

 

As fear envelops Cheryl, she is comforted by Karen Sagness, a Clinical Resource Nurse for Plastic Surgery and Regina Kostetsky, an Anesthesia Clinical Assistant, who brush her hair out of her face and wipe away her tears.

When Cheryl arrived in the operating room, her team was already busy prepping for surgery. They moved her from the gurney to the operating table and prepped her for anesthetic.

“I don’t want to do this,” Cheryl said again, losing her fight to hold back tears.

“I know,” said one of the nurses compassionately, “but you have to.”

Reassuring her that she was in good hands, they laid her down on the table. She asked the anesthetist whether she could count out loud until she lost consciousness — something she does with Colin when he is put under for lumbar punctures.

“1, 2, 3, 4 … 16, 17”

She beat Colin. Then she was out.

  

Monitors keep vigil over Cheryl’s vital sign’s while she is under anesthetic for the ten-hour surgery. A drape keeps the mess of surgery from her breathing tube and monitoring equipment.

Dr. Buchel’s team worked for close to 10 hours straight, taking small breaks in turns. Dr. Buchel himself barely took a break at all, aside from a few drinks of water and some time to stretch.

Following the long surgery, Cheryl was awakened from anesthesia and taken to initial recovery before being moved to a room in a recovery ward.

Her mother Lora stayed at the hotel attached to the hospital all week and spent most of her time at her daughter’s bedside. The surgery was on a Monday and Cheryl was given the green light to go home on Thursday.  She missed her kids.

 

Five days after surgery, Cheryl lies down as her mother changes her bandages. Drainage tubes collect fluid that builds up at the surgical sites.

Dr. Buchel took healthy flesh from Cheryl’s abdomen and use that to replace the tissue that had been taken from her breasts — effectively giving her a tummy tuck and eliminating the need for implants, which require more maintenance down the road.

“I look like they kicked the crap out of me,” she says. “This is probably my most painful experience ever but It feels good to be home. It was nice to sleep through the night last night.”

 

Cheryl wipes tears from her eyes while having her abdomen checked out by a doctor after part of her stitches opened. The complication worried and frustrated her, while she was already feeling vulnerable from the surgery.

Losing your breasts, even in part, can be a pretty big blow to a woman’s self esteem. Losing your hair as well doesn’t make things easier.

“Cancer is hard on anybody’s self-image. It’s going to change how you look. Having breast cancer at a young age, I think, is an extra challenge. My breasts are part of my life. They still define who I am as a woman, from what I wear, to activities I participate in. I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit and taking my kids swimming if I didn’t have breasts. They are a part of my identity.”

In June, Cheryl started her own chemotherapy, which means she and Colin are both undergoing chemotherapy at the same time. The objective of the chemo was to eliminate any last cancer cells that the scalpel might have missed.

Her round will be much shorter than his, however, and she gets hers at CancerCare’s Western Manitoba Cancer Centre here in Brandon. Colin still has to go to Winnipeg for his.

 

Unsure about her new look, Cheryl runs her hand through her short hair. Within another week it would all be gone.

As is common with chemotherapy, Cheryl’s hair began to fall out within days of her first treatment.

She booked an appointment at The Ultimate Hair Centre in Brandon, which specializes in helping clients dealing with sudden hair loss, often due to chemotherapy. A stylist cut her hair into a short pixie cut.

A week later, her remaining hair was falling out in clumps.  A friend helped her shave it off.

Afterwards Cheryl looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She remembers thinking, “Wow, I’m a cancer patient. Now I look like one.” She cried herself to sleep that night.

Emily told her she wasn’t pretty anymore and she wanted her mommy back. Cheryl knew her daughter didn’t mean it and didn’t understand everything she was going through.

But it still hurt.

 

Cheryl visits her father’s grave. Doug Mauthe passed away from ALS on Dec. 14, 2012, less than four months after Colin’s diagnosis.

On a hot night in July, Cheryl took her 1972 Chevy Rally Nova — willed to her by her father when he died — for a cruise. She simply tied a bandana around her head and didn’t even bother with a wig.

As the fading sun bathed Brandon in golden light, she kept up a tradition she has when out cruising in the bright yellow classic car. She rolled into the Brandon Municipal Cemetery and stopped to visit her father’s grave. She’ll always be a daddy’s girl.

After some quiet reflection and conversation at his grave site, which features an etching of the Nova on the tombstone, Cheryl cruised through Brandon, all smiles, letting the wind blow through what was left of her hair.

 

Cheryl holds in the palm of her hand a cocktail of pills meant to reduce some of the negative side-effects of chemotherapy such as nausea.

Some patients don’t react well to the cocktail of chemotherapy drugs. Nausea and vomiting are two of the more common side-effects, but after her first round of chemo, Cheryl experienced neither.

In fact the first three treatments were surprisingly easy on Cheryl. She didn’t feel nauseous. She didn’t ache. She tired out easily and losing her shoulder-length, copper-blond hair was a blow to her self image. But mostly she felt good.

Then came treatment four. The nausea was persistent. Her head pounded. Her fingers and toes tingled and ached. Her legs throbbed. And the only way she could describe the pain she felt in her hips was to say it felt like they were melting.

 

 

A blanket keeps a tired Cheryl warm as she undergoes her third chemotherapy treatment at the Western Manitoba Cancer Centre in Brandon in early August.

During her first treatment, Cheryl said: “There’s only five more rounds. No matter how shitty it is, I only have to do it five more times.” After round five, she texted: “I would rather be shot than do this again and if it wasn’t for Colin and Emily I would quit.”

Dramatic, she knows. She was in pain and venting.

But she was breaking as well. It was the most painful, scary and mentally challenging thing she had ever been through and she didn’t feel like she was winning the battle. 

 

A few times when nothing else worked and she was the only one in the house, Cheryl smoked marijuana to help manage her pain.

Cheryl was prescribed a cocktail of drugs to coincide with the chemo treatments, including morphine and Tramacet for the pain and anti-nauseants for the sick feeling. Sometimes the meds helped, but often they didn’t seem to do anything.

At the beginning of chemo, a friend dropped off some marijuana and suggested she use it for pain management. It sat in her drawer untouched throughout the first three treatments. But when the pain became unbearable, she decided to try it — only when she didn’t have the kids.

After treatment number four, marijuana worked well. It didn’t take away all the symptoms, but it took the edge off.

However, after treatments five and six, nothing worked.

 

Cheryl lies in bed trying to sleep away the pain of chemotherapy in late September. “The positive person I always am went away for a little while.”

Going through cancer as a single mother has its own challenges. Cheryl worries about making the right decisions for her kids without the support system that couples rely on, although she’s thankful that she and the kids’ dad have good communication and have put parenting ahead of their own issues.

Still, it’s lonely dealing with serious illness by yourself.

“Night time is the worst. I just wish I had someone to hold me and tell me that somehow we will make it through all of this. I lie awake at night or cry into my pillow overwhelmed by it all, not knowing where my strength for the next day will come.”

 

Exhaustion and frustration sink in while sorting out a plan for keeping Colin healthy after Emily contracted fifth disease, a common viral infection, at school in October. Colin had already been removed from school to protect him and now he and Emily would have to be separated for more than a week while her virus ran its course.

Dealing with two cancers at once was both physically and mentally exhausting.

Colin and Emily’s father, Mike, stepped up significantly over the summer and fall, taking the kids off Cheryl’s hands more and more so she could rest. When she had the kids, she tried her best to suck it up for them.

“You can’t cry in your pillow at night just whenever you want because little footsteps could be coming to your door at any moment, you know? They hear a scary noise and need cuddles or they’re sure there’s a monster underneath their bed. And you have to go check it out. You can’t say, ‘no, go back to bed. Mommy’s just having a total nuclear meltdown right now.’”

 

As Colin slowly wakes up after a lumbar puncture and chemotherapy, Cheryl kisses his cheek. At right, Cheryl lies beside Colin in a hospital bed and holds his hand as the anesthetic wears off after his lumbar puncture.

“I look at Colin and it’s funny — I don’t see a sad story. I see an amazing kid that is stronger and braver than most adults, myself included. And when I look at myself, I see so much pain behind the fake smile that sometimes I wonder who the hell I am.”

 

“Everybody’s like ‘How do you do it? I don’t know how you do it?’ You just do it,” says Cheryl. “If I go down that rabbit hole, it’s going to take me forever to find my way back out.

"So it’s not that you don’t process things, and it’s not that you don’t deal with things. It’s just you know what to avoid and what are your triggers and emotionally it’s not best for you to go there sometimes because you have other things that are needing your energy and that you have to focus on. And being a complete mess isn’t going to help. It’s only going to hurt the situation.

"That’s how I deal with it anyways. I probably need years of therapy.”

 

Emily and Cheryl comfort Colin after a painful flu shot in November. Colin has an above average familiarity with needles and various other medical procedures but the incessant treatment can prove tiring.

“I’m just looking forward to getting normal back, whatever that is. It’s been so long since we’ve had a normal life," says Cheryl.

"I want to complain about how bad Mondays suck and how awesome payday Fridays are, you know? And just experience the normalcy of looking at the clock and can’t wait to finish work and be frustrated that there isn’t enough time in the evenings to get homework and supper and bath times done — instead of worrying about chemo appointments and doctors appointments and pills and who feels what and who has what germ and how are we going to deal with all of that?

"Yeah, I just want normal.”

 

Emily and her mom share a kiss before the kids head off on a bike ride with their dad Mike on a warm evening. Despite Cheryl and Mike being divorced, he helped out considerably over the summer and fall while Cheryl wasn’t doing well.

“My hope is to have that one day where we can finally celebrate both Colin and I being cancer free… I can’t wait to see what we will be when our life is no longer doctors and pokes and chemo and treatments and we can just enjoy the new normal, whatever that may be for us.”

 

As the final drops of chemotherapy drugs worked their way through the line to her port in October, Cheryl couldn’t stop smiling and fidgeting.

“I no longer have cancer,” she laughed. “In nine minutes I get to say ‘I had cancer.’ I survived what was meant to kill me. And in one year from now, Colin can say the same thing.”

She knew she wasn’t completely out of the woods yet as she still had to endure a few weeks of hell from the chemo side-effects. But it was a milestone nonetheless.

On Nov. 4, Cheryl met with her oncologist and got the ‘all clear.’ She really could say she was cancer-free.

Colin’s maintenance chemotherapy will continue until Oct. 30, 2015.